Feature Letter of April 18th, 2024
Cousins, Frank C.
Just a brief picture of the "home". This, the first of three rooms in our dugout - Battery Headquarters is about fifteen feet long by five feet wide and by a stairway which is just high enough to bump your head comfortably as you go in and out, leads to the trench. At one end of the room is a table on which are located the cooking utensils and beside which hang sacks containing such sundry articles as Candles, hard-tac[k], bread, and such war commodities. Further along the wall may be seen one of the fellow's equipment with its bayonet and entrenchment handle, a steel helmet- or tin lizzie or tin derby of trench parlance and then a small box respirator, one of soldier’s best friends. I, myself, am seated at the writing desk - a rather rickety table - adorned with an old 'Hamilton Spectator' as a cloth and lighted by a candle with a bully-beef tin to serve as a candle-stick. Scattered around the table may be seen such sundry articles as playing cards, cigarette tins, maps, cloth for gun-cleaning etc. Is it not a wonderful picture? When I come home I shall most certainly live in the cellar.